


follow me home

by arcelian



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, cameos by half the resistance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 23:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6097165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcelian/pseuds/arcelian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey knows what gentleness is, but showing it is a strange, terrifying concept.</p>
<p>(Rey, and the Resistance, and learning kindness.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	follow me home

It’s hard to get used to the Resistance.   D’Qar is a vibrant, colourful place, teeming with life in ways Jakku never did.  There’s laughter, for one.  To Rey, it feels like bells, somewhere deep in her chest.  There’s a friendliness, too, a willingness to help carry or fetch or advise at a moment’s notice.  There’s the constant sound of other lifeforms: Poe.  His pilots.  The General, and all her loyal followers.  Outside, the trees, and the little birds and mammals that run through them.  She feels it, but she also Feels it – the life, surrounding her on all sides, warm and gentle and real.

The gentleness is the hardest part to get used to.

It’s not a foreign concept, really.  Rey’s used to holding delicate parts, their metal pieces worn down by sand and time, fragile wires and bent antennae and thin casings.  Fragile parts aren’t worth much, out there, but they’re worth more than none at all.  She’s used to the feeling of cloth winding around her palms, keeping her fingers from tearing on jagged metal, tight enough not to catch but loose enough to keep her blood flowing.  She’s used to the feeling of loose hair blowing in the wind, brushing feather-light against the nape of her neck as she watches the sun set.  (She’s used to other delicate things, too.  Rey remembers easing a tiny, trampled flower out of someone’s footprint, carefully lifting threadlike roots, ghosting calloused fingers over the petals as if they would break any minute.  She remembers it taking root, growing spindly but strong, between the toes of her AT-AT.  She wonders if it’s still there, if someone’s yanked it out and mixed it into their rations, or if it’s survived, like her.)

Rey knows what gentleness is, but showing it is a strange, terrifying concept.  On Jakku, kindness was a weakness, a vulnerability.  Something to be exploited by other scavengers looking for an easy haul or an easy meal.  If she ever allowed herself a moment of kindness, it was far out in the desert or in the bowels of a ship, somewhere with no witnesses.  Somewhere that could keep secrets, like the names of the people that once manned their controls.

On the Resistance base, it seems like secrets spread faster than official reports, and kindness and laughter are _everywhere_.

Rey is wary, at first.

Poe’s pilots pile her tray with food, listing off their favourites and waiting, wide-eyed, for her verdict, laughing whenever she dislikes anything, teasing the loser mercilessly.  It’s all kind words, harmless insults with no real heat.  Poe makes a face, wilting like a sunbaked flower, and it looks so ridiculous she can’t help but grin, even through the unfamiliar burn of Yavin chilies lingering on her tongue.  (She likes the pastries Snap offers her, twisted and braided and dusted with sugar.  They’re plain, familiar, but still lightyears better than the ration loaves she had on Jakku.)  When she visits the hangar, they offer her ration bars and dried fruit and other snacks they’ve hidden in their pockets, warm hands holding hers as they press the little packets in her palms, Jessika holding her flight mix dramatically to her chest before giving Rey a handful.  Rey wonders if they’re planning to hold these little favours for later, but then Poe asks her to fetch that wrench and Jessika tells her to hold this wire, and she decides that this must be a fair enough exchange in this place where food is plentiful and thoughts are kind.

 

One night, she wakes abruptly, blinking into the darkness of her borrowed room.  Something around her feels wrong, tight and painful and scared, and that itself is unfamiliar.  Has been, since she arrived on D’Qar.  Rey stands, makes her way through the door and down the hall.  Closes her eyes, presses her hands to her thighs, and follows the Feeling.  Opens them again and finds herself in front of Poe’s door, listening to the beat-beat-beat of a foreign heart in her throat – someone else’s fear.  Poe’s fear, echoing down to her fingertips.  Rey steels herself, knuckles tensing, taps on the door.  It feels like forever, a held breath a million years long, and then the door opens – BB-8, gyros humming, whistling soft and sad.  It stares, another endless moment, and then turns.  She follows it to the bed, to Poe, shaking, back bent, knuckles white.

The night is dark, and Poe’s fear is thick, tangible, curling in her throat.  Rey remembers hands reaching, fingertips pressing into her brain, hard enough to bruise, and _oh_ , if Kylo Ren bruised _her_ , then Poe…  But then she remembers laughing, bells deep in her ribcage (remembers trampled flowers in the desert), and reaches out.

Poe flinches, when her hand brushes his shoulder.  Looks up at her, as if he hadn’t noticed her presence.  Reaches up to wipe his face, and somehow ends up grabbing Rey’s hand instead.  Rey looks at him, holding onto her like he was dying of thirst and she held all the water in the galaxy.  She takes a deep breath and sits down on the tiny bed, knees bumping his.  Smiles, gentle (the way she smiled at the little flower), pulls his head in beside hers, and lets her arms wrap around him like a blanket.

They stay like that for a very long time, Poe’s face buried in her shoulder, their arms wrapped around each other.  Her shirt is damp, but she says nothing.  There’s plenty of water on D’Qar, and Poe can afford to lose a bit.  It seems to be helping, anyway: the fear has untangled itself from around her throat, and Poe’s mostly stopped shaking.  Finally, he pulls away, with a shaky little smile in the corner of his mouth.  He doesn’t say anything, and neither does she.  Words would be too real, too loud, for this dark gentle night, so they just squeeze side by side on the small bed, hands clasped like a promise, and sleep.

 

Later, she tells Finn about it.  It’s another quiet, sleepless night, and she whispers the words into the darkness as if someone might hear.  The base is asleep, even the tired nurses gone to bed, and Finn is silent on his cot.  She watches his chest rise beneath the bandages the doctor wound so carefully around his healing back, and thinks, _you will be safe here._

When Rey leaves, she takes a few things with her.  The General gives her a jacket, says it doesn’t fit her right anymore, she hasn’t worn it for years, Rey would get more use out of it now.  The pilots give her a box of food, smiling like sunshine: things they know she likes, that would last the trip out.  _Comfort food_ , they say, _very important_.  There’s a whole pack of those pastries, and she holds them dramatically to her chest like Jessika and her flight mix.  Poe gives her a datapad, says it’s loaded with books and music he thinks she’ll like, says BB-8 helped him pick them out.  He gives her a promise, too: that he’ll look after Finn, make sure he feels welcome (as if he wouldn’t, in this kind, laughing place).  Rey grins, and looks out at the base, and all the people she’s learned to love; and if there’s a hint of sadness twisting in her lungs as she turns to leave, it’s drowned out by the bells ringing deep in her chest.

Even as they head into hyperspace, D’Qar a green orb behind them, she feels the bells, and thinks _, this is home_.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not sure how this happened? the last time i posted fic was in 2010. but i had a lot of Feelings about tfa and they needed to go somewhere. this was originally gonna be rey+finn meta and i might still write a sequel with finn, if i can figure out how to do it without rehashing this one completely.
> 
> comments/concrit are appreciated, i have no idea what i'm doing


End file.
